WaterBreathing Tadpoles and Magical Cupcakes
by viva9626
Summary: Meryl was a normal girl until her friend fought a stranger for his cupcake. Her friend let her eat it, and she woke up as a Poliwag. Rated T for mild curses and slight violence. Accepting OCs.
1. Prologue of a Sorts

The sounds of the eighties greatest hits woke her up.

The girl groaned and hid under a mop of messy brown curls as a smooth male voice belted out his troubles.

_Sometimes I feel I've got to-(run away)-I've got to-(get away)-from the pain you drive into…_

Her hand slapped on the alarm clock, just missing the "off" button.

…_Toss and turn, I can't sleep at night! _The man sang on.

Finally, her fingers found the button. She smirked as the song was cut short. Peace and quiet at last!

"Meryl, get down here or you'll miss the bus!" Her mother shouted. So much for quiet. The girl slapped on a plain black t-shirt and some jeans and slugged downstairs.

Meryl wasn't a morning person. The only reason she managed to wake up before noon was thanks to an alarm clock and her mother's persistent calls. Several spoonfuls of sugar into her cereal kept her that way until she got on the bus and fell asleep again. _Speaking of sugar…_She thought as a bowl of chocolate frosted sugar bombs were placed in front of her. It was a bowl of diabetes just waiting to ruin her perfect sugar levels. Meryl didn't care, though, and tore into it like the neighborhood dog tears into the mailman's pants.__

"Slow down, girl! I don't want you to choke." Her mother urged. Meryl just grunted and continued to massacre the poor cereal. Her mother chuckled, but didn't say anything. The woman was a licensed nurse, and could handle a simple choking.

The rest of the morning was uneventful. The daily checklist was followed as normal: get up, eat, dress, etc. The only thing left was the bus. Meryl's bus picked up at least twenty kids on her stop. She lives in a huge apartment complex full of rich and poor alike, and most residents were under thirty. The college was ten minutes away, and two high schools were only five.

Meryl wasn't the most social person in the world. Far from it. On most mornings, she only talked to her mom and saved the talking for school. It didn't bother her. She was content to sit back, listen to her iPod, and wait for the bus to come. Everyone knew that.

That didn't keep her from people watching, though. She knew only a few of the kids on her stop; most of them were in other grades and in different cliques, so neither parties tried to befriend another. One of the kids she knew, a Porto Rican boy named Gabriel, was busy picking a fight with another quiet, iPod-listening boy. The iPod-boy was holding a cupcake, about ready to eat it. Gabriel, being the trickster he was, tried to swipe it. Instantly a fight broke out, and a crowd of curious kids blocked Meryl's view.

This wasn't the first time Gabriel got into a fight, and this won't be the last. Gabriel loved to get people riled up in any way he could; spreading bullshit, starting rumors, and getting into fights. Stealing a sweet from an obviously stronger boy…this was a new one. _This is going to be funny._ Meryl thought, chuckling to herself. Gabe's antics always were. It was part of his charm.

She walked over and pulled out an earbud. Standing on her toes, she peered over the row of heads to see the much taller I-pod boy try to fight off the short, bulky Gabriel. They were shouting things at eachother, but Meryl couldn't make them out. She pulled out the other earbud and pushed her way forward.

Gabriel was kicked in the gut. He stumbled back, but kept his balance and lunged for the taller boy, "What the hell, Gabe! It's mine! Go get your own!" iPod-boy shouted, holding the prize in his right hand. Still, Meryl's odd little friend kept lunging. Even with his stature, the boy was a damn good jumper, and soon he managed to snatch the sweet from the boy's hands.

"Hell no! There's no way a person like you can get one of these, anyway! You stole it too!" Gabe shouted. Meryl raised an eyebrow. What was so special about a cupcake? It was a cupcake, something she could buy with five others just like it for three bucks.

"Dude…it's just a cupcake. Calm down." She teased. By now the crowd was dissipating. The show was over. Gabriel looked over at her, holding the cupcake delicately, like it was fragile china.

Gabe looked over at Meryl with the exact same expression of Golem from The Lord of The Rings. She twitched under his terrifying gaze, half-expecting him to call it 'precious.'

"Why don't you take a bite and find out?" He proposed. The other boy cursed loudly, but they both ignored him. Meryl wasn't as much of a dick as Gabe, but she liked messing with people too. Right now, she could go for some sugar, and she didn't know this guy. Why not mess with him? She would only take a bite of his cupcake, it's not like she would lick it all over.

"Sure." She said, smirking. Gabe offered her the cupcake and she quickly snatched it up, ripping off a small corner. The iPod guy started to object, but the little bit was already in her mouth, and _damn_ did it taste good!

"What the hell did you just do!" The guy shouted, but his voice didn't sound right. Meryl licked a bit of icing off of her lips, ignoring the boys. She held out the cupcake to Gabe, but he was turned away, taking a sucker-punch to the face. Just then, the bus pulled up, and the driver was screaming at them, "Sit down and shut up!"

Too late, Miss Crabtree. She was already long gone.


	2. Her Life Was Over

**Author's Note: **I thought by this point I would know what type of person I wanted to be Meryl's trainer. However, my brain will not allow me to think-even this chapter was hard to write. So now I will accept OCs for Meryl's trainer, the pokemon that trainer will have, a rival, and maybe a few companions too. I'll add the form on my profile. Please submit forms via PM.

Her life was over. She was dead.

She had to be dead to feel this _heavy._ Her lungs felt like a rhinoceros was crushing them. This is what it felt like to be a beached whale.

And yet, she could breathe. Her heart was still beating—albeit, faster than usual, but she blamed that on fear—and she was still thinking. If she really were dead, she would feel nothing. Know nothing. Be nothing.

So Meryl was still on Planet Earth. As she grew conscious, she could hear the world around her. All sorts of birdcalls filled the air with melody. There was splashing nearby, so she was near water. Where did the bus stop go? Her bus stop was right in the middle of a metropolitan area. The only animals there were the cockroaches and rats.

_Was I roofied?_ Meryl's heart skipped at that thought. She quickly opened her eyes and glanced around. Walls of grass blocked her view. She stood carefully. Her legs felt weak and unused; not all at what she was used to. Band camp had reduced her legs to rock-hard muscle, and even in her weakest moments she needn't struggle to move them.

The grass was just at eyelevel. Meryl peered over, standing on her toes to look for something recognizable. What she saw was a mystery. This patch of forest only lasted for another hundred feet at most. It ended in a rocky shore where a small lake started. On the far side of the lake was an amber wooden bridge occupied by a small amount of people stationed every fifty feet. On the other side of the bridge lay another shore and a huge plateau.

_Where the hell am I?_ Meryl drew in a ragged breath. A whistling sound filled the air and she yelped, only making the sound worse.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." Instantly Meryl screamed again and whirled around. At least, she tried to, but instead she fell on her face. The source of the voice gave a shrill, harsh laugh followed by a clicking noise. Meryl forced herself to her feet and turned around.

She was talking to a crab. A giant, red and white crab that wielded two huge claws. It was nearly as huge as she, and acted as if this was perfectly normal, "Come in the water with me. You look dry." It said and sidestepped around her, ignoring her petrified look. Meryl turned around and watched the crab walk to the shore. It seemed there was nothing she could do but follow. _When in Rome, act like the Romans do…_She remembered, a quote from some old movie or book; what, she couldn't remember.

The red and white crab lead Meryl to the shore, and soon she became aware of just how weak she was. Her legs felt like sticks, and a heavy weight sat just above her butt. She couldn't feel her arms anymore, nor could she move her head to look at herself. All she could do was look ahead and hope nothing scarier than a crab appeared.

Once they reached the shore, the crab sat just under the water where it passed entirely over him but was not strong enough to cast him away. Meryl hesitated to follow, but she knew this heavy feeling on her chest would subside once she got in the water. She took a step forward into the water, and then paused.

The water was clear, clearer than any water she had ever seen; lake, ocean, or tap water. She could see a perfect reflection when the waves reached her, slowly lapping at her feet. Instead of the pale, curly-haired girl, there stood a small blue…thing with a twitching swirl on its stomach. Thick red lips sat above the swirl, and just above that were big baby blue eyes. Behind her twitched the source of the pain on her butt; a thick tadpole tail. She could barely see her legs; they were inappropriately small for a body this big.

_What have I become?_ Meryl could barely hear the crab speaking. Anger sparked in her as she remembered clearly the events from before; Gabriel and that insane fight with the iPod kid over some shitty cupcake, and _this_ is what happened to her! Who was he to let her take of bite of some cupcake—_It probably wasn't a cupcake! It probably was some time-space machine!_—and get her trapped in this universe—_I know where I am. I'm at Nugget Bridge, and that crab is a Krabby and I'm a_—and turn her into a freaking Poliwag! No one had the right to take another person's life in their hands and change it just on a whim, without even telling them what was going to happen! Meryl let out deep growl, something that hurt her throat.

"Hey…are you okay?" The Krabby said softly. "I am going to kick Gabriel's ass." She spoke. No remorse, no regret, no tone at all in her voice. Later, she wouldn't remember saying that.

_**NEXT TIME: **Meryl gets a trainer! Will they be reliable and help her grow stronger in her quest to kick Gabriel's ass, or will they be a bumbling fool? Or perhaps something inbetween? Find out next, on Water-Breathing Tadpoles and Magical Cupcakes!_


	3. Anger Management

**Author's Note: **I'd like to thanks Timberstar and awakeorangutang for submitting OCs. I will be using them. I'd also like to thank snowdroplet and Timberstar (again!) for reviewing. You guys are the reason I'm continuing this!

Meryl had a bit of an anger problem. She'll admit it. "I am Meryl Jones, and I have anger management issues."

Anger is the easiest emotion to get someone to feel. Fear is a close second, but most can cover their fear with another emotion-in Meryl's case, anger. Every human gets angry at some point in their life, for either a good reason or a stupid one. Meryl's had both, multiple times.

Take right now, for instance. If she was still young, all she would feel is fear and guilt. But instead, those emotions are hidden under a raging red lake of uncontrolled anger. If she were a Magikarp, she would evolve right now, and use Dragon Rage.

But she isn't. Instead Meryl dove into the reflection in a half-baked idea to kill it. At least she couldn't see it anymore, and that heavy feeling was gone.

_In fact…_Being in the water felt pretty…good. Without thinking, Meryl easily shot through the deep, eyes open—for once keeping your eyes open didn't hurt! It was easier to see underwater than up on land! It wasn't even that hard to do it; her tail did all the work.

Soon she was fifty feet under, surrounded by Magikarp. They were on all sides, pushing her with the currents, and for once Meryl wasn't worried about the consequences of "doing what everyone else is doing." It felt great here, water filling her lungs, swimming through the deep.

Soon the Magikarp caught on to her. They murmured half-sentences, slowly pushing her out of the center of the school and outside. She swam by herself, faster than the school of Magikarp, faster than the Gyarados leading them. Thoughts raced in her head, all leading toward the same thing; _What the hell was she supposed to do?_ She was a weakling now; a Poliwag of all pokemon. Just some little tadpole that could barely walk by itself. All it could do was swim, and she can't find a way back to Earth—the real Earth—in the water.

She was in luck, though. Bill's house was on Route 25, and this is Route 24. Even being a weakling, she could get from one Route to another. Just avoid the trainers and avoid all other pokemon.

So Meryl headed up to the surface to get her bearings. Time to take this stupid-ass feet and run for her life, quite literally. Just a few more feet to the surface and—

_SNAG!_

"_Holy shit!" _

An unbearable pain filled her mouth and Meryl coughed up blood. She was dragged up to the surface—now coughing bloody bubbles. At least she learned now to use Bubble. Fill your lungs with water and expel it very fast until it caught on this ticklish part of your throat.—with a hook in her mouth. Someone sat on the shore—which was pretty close by—and reeled her in. A pokemon sat with them, but Meryl couldn't see anything clearly until she was on the beach, facedown.

Meryl groaned. Something took the hook out of her mouth, and she tried to use Bubble on it. It didn't work. Slowly she pushed herself up to stand and blinked rapidly. She could see clearly now. A boy with red hair and a Nidoran female stood side-by-side, eyeing her. The boy pulled out a Pokedex and scanned her.

"Poliwag, the Tadpole Pokemon. Its newly grown legs prevent it from walking well. It appears to prefer swimming to walking. This specimen is female, two feet tall, and weighs 26 pounds. There is a sixty percent chance she is level 18."

"Level 18, huh? She might know Hypnosis. Be careful, Ms. Nido." The boy said in a rather calm tone. He folded the fishing pole until it was the size of a hairbrush and stuck it in his backpack.

So apparently pokemon fishing is just the same as real-world fishing. Hook-in-mouth, processed, attacked. The only difference is Meryl won't land-drown.

"Don't worry, we won't kill you. My human needs a water-type." The Nidoran girl spoke and then let out a feral growl. Meryl shuddered. _That must be Growl attack. I used to think it was useless. _She thought and then tried to use Bubble again.

Now that she wasn't panicking (too hard) she couldn't remember what she had done. Still, it was her turn, and the redhead boy and his pokemon were waiting for her to make a move. Meryl wasn't going to even try using Hypnosis.

After a few seconds, that tickle in her throat came again. Meryl spat out a tiny stream of bubbles at the Nidoran, and she took the hit, shaking her head. Somehow, that actually looked like it hurt her. How, Meryl didn't know.

"Okay, girl. Use Scratch." The boy ordered. Instantly the Nidoran lunged for Meryl, and she tried to run, but her tiny legs wouldn't let her. The rabbit-like pokemon was on top of her in a second, her claws digging into Meryl's side.

Meryl was down on the ground again. She struggled to get up, but before she could her body was encased in a red glow. Suddenly the world shifted around her, into something completely different…

She was in a pond. Her head poked out of the water, and she could see trees surrounding her. One hung half-fallen over the water, next to another that was in the water. The pond was very tiny, only here because of the frequent rain. Past the trees were houses, all shaped the same. This was a rain-formed pond in her apartment complex. She spent half the summer here when she was little. It was so fun…Her stomach rumbled as she remembered the barbeques. Her dad knew just how to grill everything to perfection…

The world flickered. A barbeque appeared on the shore, and Meryl almost screamed in fright. This wasn't her past at all! She was in a Pokeball and didn't even put up a fight! _Now I'm stuck in the Pokemon-Matrix until the next battle…_

But then the world flickered again, and Meryl was sucked through a white light. She bristled and prepared another Bubble, expecting to be attacked again. Instead, she was in a bright white room that smelled of GermX and animals. She was sitting on a soft white bed with a pink-haired lady holding a clipboard.

_Holy Christ, the Nurse Joys exist…_ Meryl thought. There were other pink-haired ladies, all with the same haircut and smile, scribbling stuff down while examining other pokemon. There were at least six Nurse Joys and six completely different pokemon. Meryl saw everything from a Charmeleon to the Nidoran from before to one of the Nurse Joy's Chanseys.

"Don't be scared. You were captured. Your human took you here, to the Cerulean City Pokemon Center." The Chansey said. Meryl shuddered. The Nurse finished scribbling on her clipboard and glanced Meryl over one last time, checking the scratch on her side and her mouth.

"She's in no risk. She just needs a Potion." The Nurse said to her Chansey, and the pink pokemon left the room. The Nurses left too, and soon it was just the treated Pokemon in here.

"Hey. Poliwag. What's your name?" The Nidoran said. Meryl used her tail turn her towards the other pokemon. All eyes were on her, and suddenly she was terrified again. When did she get so nervous?

"Meryl. I'm not a Poliwag." She said. The Nidoran looked over at a Tauros. The bull pokemon was so big, they couldn't fit him on a stretcher. He was sitting on a couch.

The Charmeleon, currently laying on his stomach, smirked, "You sure?" He asked. Meryl blushed and scowled the best her injured mouth could do, "Yes, I'm sure. I'm only like this because my stupid friend gave me a magic cupcake."

Meryl realized just how insane she sounded. Every single face was looking at her with concern. At least the Charmeleon stopped smirking.

"…I know it sounds crazy, but you have to believe me. You're the redhead's pokemon, right? I'm going to be stuck with you for a while, until I can get back to my universe."

Still no response. Meryl sighed and tried to lie down, really hoping for a distraction. Just in time, the Chansey and Nurses came back into the room. The Chansey held up a Potion and sprayed a small amount into a paper cup. The rest she sprayed on Meryl's side, and she hissed at the stinging feeling, "Okay little Poliwag, I need you to drink this." The Nurse Joy said and put the cup up to Meryl's mouth. Meryl chose to ignore the patronizing and drank it. It tasted like vodka and burned like whiskey, but it did make her cheek feel better.

"You'll be released soon. Just stay here, and don't move too much." The Chansey said, flashing a brilliant smile. Meryl smiled back, out of politeness. She wouldn't try to leave. At least, not until she was a Poliwhirl. The Pokedex said she was at level 18, and Poliwags evolve at level 25. Meryl will stick with this kid until she evolved, and then book it to Bill's place. She'd be out of here so fast that Charmeleon will never smirk again…


End file.
